Tuesday, March 20, 2012

"In belonging to a landscape, one feels a rightness, an at-homeness, a knitting of self and world. This condition of clarity and focus, this being fully present, is akin to what the Buddhists call mindfulness, what Christian contemplatives refer to as recollection, what Quakers call centering down. I am suspicious of any philosophy that would separate this-worldly from other-worldy commitments. There is only one world, and we participate in it here and now, in our flesh and our place.”Scott Russell Sanders

PLACES

PLACE

A space that is an integral part and an extension of thenatural world around it, yet reveals the individuality of those who reside there and allows people to interact meaningfully to create a deep sense of belonging.

Marilyn FinnemoreImportance of Place

NO-PLACE

Spaces of such temporary, transient activity as to not have the significance to be regarded as “places”; coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé, who wrote Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995). “Marc Augé coined the term . . . to describe specific kinds of spaces . . . designed to be passed through or consumed rather than appropriated, and retaining little or no trace of our engagement with them.”1